what goes on when I'm not home

When I left the room, years ago, there were wooden-bone dinosaurs, three of them. There were tiny cities, of lego and k-nex, there were bears, in plenty, a snuffeluffagus, and a musical wind up sheep. When I left the room, years ago, these toys had six hours to effect a hasty civilization, organize a dance, bombard the opposing village (lego and k-nex are not compatible). They rarely made it to the upper reaches of the closet, where board game armies and venture capital investors waited, stacked away in boxes. Things were different, back when the longest chance they had for freedom was an eighteen hour sleep over.

Bears would work in pairs, hurling throw pillows twice their size over the edge of the loft, until a sizeable landing pad had been created. Then, with a running leap, they'd hurl their fuzzy selves over the edge, to collide with big, meaty slaps against the floor, the bed, the chairs, the radiator.
Picking themselves up, bears across the room surveyed the damage: a few bruises, quite a lot of mussed fur. The landing pad had survived quite intact, of course. Next time, they'd stick the landing, they'd promise one another. They'd shake their heads, growl, wipe the fur out of their eyes (and back into their eyes), and survey their domain. They were the natural lords of the territory, watching tiny structures emerge from the lego pile, or great skeletal piles from the k-nex, nothing they couldn't rush upon in a moment of frustration, tear down, and demand tribute from, and so they sat on great pillows, ate great meals of dustmites, captured from under the bed at great expense.

Later, newer, trickier things entered the room. When the bears catapulted down, they were met by yards of fishing line, hooked and weighted by the lego swarms. The k-nex wrapped their structures in tight clothing skins, and defended against onslaught behind their walls, beneath the desk, consulted intrawebs and wrapped themselves in how-to knowledge and built catapults, scorpions, trebuche. Dwarven cities arose, networked to other civilizations across the globe, while the legos waged brutal war against the ferocious bears.

While the K-nex were well defended behind their massive walls, the lego built fortresses of their own, simple block cubes atop piles of books, or hanging from webs of floss stretched between bunks. Their commanders wore massive mustaches, and screamed obscenities while wielding spears or swords. They catapaulted men across the field, armed with tidbits and string, to force the bears back down, barbarians still.

Times changed, and the K-nex found themselves in possession of new and stronger processors, better strategical simulations, more t-shirts strewn across the floor. They maintained their dominance, and their isolation, while the lego discovered the ruins of their first mainframe.
They found it in bits, pieces. An alien technology, but strangely similar to what they knew. There were slots for things, and when things fit, they often worked. So they hung new wires in their webs, a motherboard, a floppy drive, an hdd, the guts stretched out along their cords. The first one hadn't worked, but with the second wireless antennae, they found themselves the net.

Still, I came home, either thumping up the stairs, which gave everything but the bears (who'd taken to hiding under the bed anyway) ample time to escape, or, more worrisome, clambering in through the window, off the porch. They'd have to build small, things they could tear down at a moment's notice, little networks that could be reduced to piles from the cry of a spotter...and then I left.

Now the K-nex hive towers above the desk, anchoring its center of gravity against both the ceiling and the floor, the corner and the fan, an entire nation secreted behind towels, blankets, shirts and sheets. The legos, though, have spread out, developed. Their suspended platform villages have become towers, their generals: explorers. They've plumbed the heights of the closet, where once they'd only encountered the depths. Top-hats, steamships, and thimbles have added venture capital to their economy, and they've hired cannons and cavalry from other camps, mercenary armies from across the globe. They've built a steel plane, and folded many sheets of paper, refashioned their hooks into harpoons, cutting edges, and make ready. Their target? Not the bears of old, who tyrannized barbaric tribes, but the insect aliens across the room, the hive with the stronger net connection, the hardware of the future.